1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computer system and biometric measurements to support the requirements of high security, limited access facilities such a government laboratories, situation rooms, and the like, as well as high security industrial laboratories and offices and the like.
2. Background Information
Numerous difficulties exist in policing the entries of high security facilities and there is a push to put technology to use in solving some of the problems and making the entries to such facilities more secure. Additionally, the quest to provide such services in a more user-friendly manner and a push to expand the usefulness of the overall security activities between facilities within a high security organization can be enhanced with resort to additional technologies being employed in inventive ways.
Such concerns loom large in an age where the potential for industrial espionage and terrorism abound. Governments and large corporations, particularly, want to be able to precisely control access to various facilities, while at the same time allow valuable workers to migrate easily between high security facilities with ease, if such movement is warranted. For example, if a researcher in one field needs to visit with another worker in a high technology laboratory across the country, if a system could facilitate that researcher's secure access to that other laboratory in a substantially, or fully automated manner, the speed and ease and cost of making such visits would be considerably enhanced.
Of additional concern is the stress placed on entrance guards who must decide whether to admit a person to a facility. Especially at times of high traffic, the human interactive access control methodologies used at the present time can break down or become less reliable. Too, the granularity of access can be enhanced with automation and biometrics so that various rooms within facilities can be more easily controlled with a heightened level of reliability if appropriate application of such technologies is employed.
Finally, the paperwork maintained for site access across a group of sites, each having their own individual requirements, can be burdensome. Employing the technologies discussed here as taught in this patent can reduce this cost.
In current practice, guards are relied upon to provide the first line of defense against fraudulent intrusion into secure facilities and for auxiliary purposes. It is not feasible or desirable for a guard to have access to schedules for people who may need to travel and work at more than one facility updated on a constant basis, even though such access could provide a higher level of site and personnel security.
With this invention a more positive identification can be established using a biometric card and biometric measurement at the secure facility, and even at a particular gate or door within such a facility, while facilitating record keeping of entry by that individual in a form immediately accessible to the appropriate authority.
There are a number of biometric systems available currently to provide relatively automatic identity checks. At least one system has described some kinds of access control using automatic biometric measurement. In the U.S. Patent issued to Mann et al., (U.S. Pat. No. 6,119,096, incorporated herein by this reference) a passenger can be said to be checked-in for a flight without use of cards or other identification based on biometric identification using an iris recognition system. There are many other ways to obtain biometric data besides the iris observation data collected by the Mann system, such as for example, using fingerprint checks (using something like the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,125,192, hereby also incorporated by this reference) voice checks, IR scans of body parts, hand shapes, movement characteristics, and so forth, any of which could be used together with other systems for redundancy, or alone, to confirm the identity of an individual presenting himself at a border crossing. (A patent describing the iris biometric measurement technology is U.S. Pat. No. 5,956,122, is also incorporated herein by this reference to provide further background information on the technology.) A recent patent issued to Pare, Jr. Et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,154,879 details many of the potential types of biometric security currently available and uses them in a financial account access setting. This Pare, Jr. et al., patent is also incorporated by this reference herein in its entirety as well.
Still, there is no well understood system for facilitating the monitoring and automatic access granting at scheduled times to high security facilities, using ID tokens that do not require biometric data.
Numerous security schemes may be imagined based on the kinds of identity proofs currently available, however this invention provides additional security through the automatic coordination of various such components that is not found in the prior art.